Harrowstorms?

Morgha_Kul

So, I've been bopping around West Skyrim, and I've been involved in a few of these now. Not so much because I wanted to be, I just didn't want to jump to a conclusion without any experience of the things.

Now, I've commented before on the absurd level of difficulty in them. Tonight, I did one from its beginning, fought carefully, managed to avoid getting killed, and contributed significantly to the battle. At the end, my rewards were a blue ring, one crafting style item, one luminous russula, and one piece of vendor trash. There was next to no experience from it either.

So, my question is... what is the POINT? I mean, for the absurd difficulty, 20 minutes of nonstop battle, potentially dozens of respawns, repair costs and so on... we get trivial rewards and xp? Why would anyone bother with these things? I mean, I would get better rewards from doing delves. Hell, I'd get better rewards from wandering around OVERLAND, picking up chests and crafting nodes, and killing wandering bad guys. Why would anyone bother wasting 20 minutes fighting a ridiculously difficult battle they're not going to get anything from?

Ryuvain

The rewards being bad was even brought up on greymoor release. Zos didn't care, so no changes.

BlueRaven

Morgha_Kul wrote: »

So, I've been bopping around West Skyrim, and I've been involved in a few of these now. Not so much because I wanted to be, I just didn't want to jump to a conclusion without any experience of the things.

Now, I've commented before on the absurd level of difficulty in them. Tonight, I did one from its beginning, fought carefully, managed to avoid getting killed, and contributed significantly to the battle. At the end, my rewards were a blue ring, one crafting style item, one luminous russula, and one piece of vendor trash. There was next to no experience from it either.

So, my question is... what is the POINT? I mean, for the absurd difficulty, 20 minutes of nonstop battle, potentially dozens of respawns, repair costs and so on... we get trivial rewards and xp? Why would anyone bother with these things? I mean, I would get better rewards from doing delves. Hell, I'd get better rewards from wandering around OVERLAND, picking up chests and crafting nodes, and killing wandering bad guys. Why would anyone bother wasting 20 minutes fighting a ridiculously difficult battle they're not going to get anything from?

Wait until you see the oblivion portals, basically the same bad loot for even MORE work.

spartaxoxo

The rewards shouldn't be that good, it's overland content. The Harrowstorms should just he toned down. Put them at the same difficulty as geysers and suddenly their rewards would be nice.

Bradyfjord

There is a daily quest to fight them. The rewards can potentially include a motif page if I'm not mistaken.

spartaxoxo

Bradyfjord wrote: »

There is a daily quest to fight them. The rewards can potentially include a motif page if I'm not mistaken.

There are motifs you can get from the dailies and furnishing plans you can get from both the dailies and the storms that sell for decent amount.

SeaGtGruff

There's also a pouch or something that can drop with additional stuff in it, right?

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Harrowstorms

The actual rewards can vary a good bit due to RNG, so every now and again you might get lucky, but it seems like most days you just get average or sub-average rewards.

Eccentric_Vampire

You can potentially get vampiric furniture recipes, some of the rarer ones go for pretty high prices in guildstores. That's the only reason I do them other than daily quests.

Wolfchild07

Not to mention companions won't help you with them because they're so bad, that they die to trash mobs.

I have to say though, harrowstorms are much quicker if people know to focus the pikes. Sometimes I see people getting distracted by the constantly spawning bosses. It's a good show, but very slow.

YstradClud

Bradyfjord wrote: »

There is a daily quest to fight them. The rewards can potentially include a motif page if I'm not mistaken.

Yes they give decent experience as well. It's basically the main way I level apart from dungeons and Cyrodiil.

spartaxoxo

Wolfchild07 wrote: »

Not to mention companions won't help you with them because they're so bad, that they die to trash mobs.

I have to say though, harrowstorms are much quicker if people know to focus the pikes. Sometimes I see people getting distracted by the constantly spawning bosses. It's a good show, but very slow.

Stun the ghosts and you won't get minibosses. And people often ignore the ghosts that aren't moving and instead focus on the pikes. At least from my experience.

Wolfchild07

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Wolfchild07 wrote: »

Not to mention companions won't help you with them because they're so bad, that they die to trash mobs.

I have to say though, harrowstorms are much quicker if people know to focus the pikes. Sometimes I see people getting distracted by the constantly spawning bosses. It's a good show, but very slow.

Stun the ghosts and you won't get minibosses. And people often ignore the ghosts that aren't moving and instead focus on the pikes. At least from my experience.

Right, yeah, that too. I don't think people generally know that the ghosts fill the reliquaries.

Ryath_Waylander

Wolfchild07 wrote: »

Not to mention companions won't help you with them because they're so bad, that they die to trash mobs.

I have to say though, Harrowstorms are much quicker if people know to focus the pikes. Sometimes I see people getting distracted by the constantly spawning bosses. It's a good show, but very slow.

This! So much this. It's so annoying when someone Leroy Jenkins the thing solo for two minutes, so that by the time you pitch up there are 4 huge adds stomping around. Then people waste time trying to kill them or the blue ghosts. Yes, the blue ghosts spawn adds but not if they haven't got a pike.

With 4 people hitting the pikes hard, together and dumping Uti's and Aoe's (which will automatically wipe out the ghosts) on them, you can burn all of them down before the big adds spawn. Then you only have the last boss to contend with. Greymoor has been out a year already and yet somehow people still don't grasp the mechanics. Is there such a high turnover of players? I say 4 but my hubby and I, with a Stamsorc and Healplar can duo them. I agree with the OP that it's a lot of hard work for petty rewards, but it doesn't have to be hard work.

That being said, I don't even bother to do Harrowstorms in Western Skyrim, for the daily reward. I pick it up in Solitude and clear the storm in the Reach. More people there.

Zer0_CooL

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The rewards shouldn't be that good, it's overland content. The Harrowstorms should just he toned down. Put them at the same difficulty as geysers and suddenly their rewards would be nice.

No they don't need to be toned down.

They are already easy enough, given the fact that they are not meant to be done solo. Yet they can be done by 2 or 3 (in my experience) players easily.

Absolutely no reason to make them as trivial as everything else in overland PvE.

spartaxoxo

Zer0_CooL wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The rewards shouldn't be that good, it's overland content. The Harrowstorms should just he toned down. Put them at the same difficulty as geysers and suddenly their rewards would be nice.

No they don't need to be toned down.

They are already easy enough, given the fact that they are not meant to be done solo. Yet they can be done by 2 or 3 (in my experience) players easily.

Absolutely no reason to make them as trivial as everything else in overland PvE.

And when 2-3 people aren't available, because the content is dead, people just can't farm them. Overland Content should be scaled to the number of people actually doing it. And not tuned to people who claim they want difficultly but then don't actually play so that they can write in their diary about how they thought about doing one, didn't, but still gave themselves a little smile for the thought.

Alaztor91

They shouldn't be nerfed considering that they can be soloed in like 8 mins, rewards ARE mostly crap tho, like dolmen tier quality with the rare chance of the satchel giving you an expensive furnishing recipe.

Solid_Metal

Morgha_Kul wrote: »

So, I've been bopping around West Skyrim, and I've been involved in a few of these now. Not so much because I wanted to be, I just didn't want to jump to a conclusion without any experience of the things.

Now, I've commented before on the absurd level of difficulty in them. Tonight, I did one from its beginning, fought carefully, managed to avoid getting killed, and contributed significantly to the battle. At the end, my rewards were a blue ring, one crafting style item, one luminous russula, and one piece of vendor trash. There was next to no experience from it either.

So, my question is... what is the POINT? I mean, for the absurd difficulty, 20 minutes of nonstop battle, potentially dozens of respawns, repair costs and so on... we get trivial rewards and xp? Why would anyone bother with these things? I mean, I would get better rewards from doing delves. Hell, I'd get better rewards from wandering around OVERLAND, picking up chests and crafting nodes, and killing wandering bad guys. Why would anyone bother wasting 20 minutes fighting a ridiculously difficult battle they're not going to get anything from?

they harrowstorm is just fine as it is, its actually challenging and fun to fight, the only problem is the reward, is crappy beyond believe, everyone already put feedback on it, but ZoS don't care, never change it even until Q4, and don't expect it to change in the future unless its an event

Zer0_CooL

spartaxoxo wrote: »

And when 2-3 people aren't available, because the content is dead, people just can't farm them. Overland Content should be scaled to the number of people actually doing it. And not tuned to people who claim they want difficultly but then don't actually play so that they can write in their diary about how they thought about doing one, didn't, but still gave themselves a little smile for the thought.

The content is not dead at all.

I do them regularly and never have i had problems with finding allies for HS. In fact most the times action is already going on when i arrive (PS4 EU). So unless its in the early morning, you should be able to do them without a problem.

If you want to "farm" them for multiple hours, maybe ask in a guild or friends. Its an MMO afterall.

BlueRaven

Zer0_CooL wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

And when 2-3 people aren't available, because the content is dead, people just can't farm them. Overland Content should be scaled to the number of people actually doing it. And not tuned to people who claim they want difficultly but then don't actually play so that they can write in their diary about how they thought about doing one, didn't, but still gave themselves a little smile for the thought.

The content is not dead at all.

I do them regularly and never have i had problems with finding allies for HS. In fact most the times action is already going on when i arrive (PS4 EU). So unless its in the early morning, you should be able to do them without a problem.

If you want to "farm" them for multiple hours, maybe ask in a guild or friends. Its an MMO afterall.

They are the current content so they are not quite dead yet. But soon they will be as dead as geysers or dragons in northern elsweyr.

The more content zos creates, the more spread out the player base becomes.

Morgha_Kul

To clarify... I wasn't complaining about the difficulty of the storms (which I do think is excessive for overland content), I was puzzling about the nature of the rewards, considering the difficulty.

I'm sure there are people out there who find them easy. I rather doubt they're the majority, but whatever. I think they would agree, however, that the rewards are... practically nonexistent, however difficult they find the storms.

For content that difficult, the rewards should be better... either that, or the content should be easier.

I think all that's really necessary is to reduce the damage output of the enemies and effects. I mean, my characters (who average around 25k health) are constantly oneshotted by attacks exceeding 40k damage. These attacks happen more or less continuously in numerous large aoes, so they're frequently impossible to avoid. Even the basic attacks of the enemies hit rather hard for overland content.

But again, that wasn't the point of the thread. I just wondered if I was missing the point. With such trivial rewards, I couldn't understand why anyone would bother with them. That there are decent rewards from the dailies explains it to some extent... but why would anyone just out adventuring want to participate? Seems like kind of a poor design, to me.

Vevvev

Stun the ghosts and don't kill them afterwards. They'll bug out and no longer move until they time out and respawn. Knowing this if you cast a skill with major expedition, and have a stun on hand, you can burst the pikes till they're almost dead by yourself and then take them all down quickly.

That's how I solo these things without any additional bosses showing up, and they end up being a walk in the park. Get a group together who are not brain dead and understand the mechanics and the rewards are equal to the "difficulty".

AcadianPaladin

I've done plenty of Harrowstorms and now lump them with dragons. That is, they are on my ignore list. This has nothing to do with the loot and everything to do with the fun. I simply find Harrowstorms and dragons not fun or enjoyable. The fact that I cannot solo them is another irritant because I'm not interested in waiting for or trying to coordinate a group.

Contrast that to a dolmen (which I enjoy). I see one active in the distance and run to it knowing that whether I am the only one there or there are others, I'll be able to enjoy getting it closed. I've run to my last Harrowstorm or dragon however, only to find I am the only one there and leaving.

Caligamy_ESO

Am I the only one who actually enjoys the difficulty of Harrowstorms & Dragons?

I feel like just about 99% of the rest of overland content is ridiculously easy to where I can push 1 2 5 for my area dots and keep running as the trash dies behind me.. it's quite boring.

Morgha_Kul

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

I've done plenty of Harrowstorms and now lump them with dragons. That is, they are on my ignore list. This has nothing to do with the loot and everything to do with the fun. I simply find Harrowstorms and dragons not fun or enjoyable. The fact that I cannot solo them is another irritant because I'm not interested in waiting for or trying to coordinate a group.

Contrast that to a dolmen (which I enjoy). I see one active in the distance and run to it knowing that whether I am the only one there or there are others, I'll be able to enjoy getting it closed. I've run to my last Harrowstorm or dragon however, only to find I am the only one there and leaving.

I'm with you on this, I feel exactly the same way.

Caligamy_ESO wrote: »

Am I the only one who actually enjoys the difficulty of Harrowstorms & Dragons?

I feel like just about 99% of the rest of overland content is ridiculously easy to where I can push 1 2 5 for my area dots and keep running as the trash dies behind me.. it's quite boring.

I find most overland content pretty trivial. My usual fun is found soloing dolmens (also pretty easy, honestly) or world bosses (the older ones, the new ones just bury you with adds)... or doing Public Dungeons solo.
Now, I'm doing that with a hybrid character that averages around 5k dps. I know there are people out there doing in excess of 100k dps, who can pretty well obliterate anything they look at without any challenge. Of COURSE those kinds of people will find harrowstorms and dragons easy, because they've gone to great lengths to become so powerful that they've trivialized everything.

Now, I'm not condemning anyone that is capable of this, or that finds that the difficulty of harrowstorms, dragons, veteran dungeons and the like is easy or enjoyable. The problem is that it is only easy for people who can achieve that kind of damage output, and it's entirely out of reach of what I expect is the majority of players, who top out at perhaps 10k dps.
If there is blame, it falls upon the developers who have allowed power creep to get worse and worse.

It's partly the gear, but some experimenting this week has led me to conclude that animation canceling is a large part of it. The "skill" many people speak of is the timing required to cancel a light attack's animation to fire off an ability, essentially increasing the damage per second by having more abilities activating at essentially the same time. That players are able to do this is indeed a demonstration of skill... but it's also the root of much of the excessive dps... or so it seems to me. I could be wrong.

In any case, this really isn't what I started the thread about. Interesting, though, that so many threads seem to come back to this discussion.

opaj

Caligamy_ESO wrote: »

Am I the only one who actually enjoys the difficulty of Harrowstorms & Dragons?

I feel like just about 99% of the rest of overland content is ridiculously easy to where I can push 1 2 5 for my area dots and keep running as the trash dies behind me.. it's quite boring.

I enjoy fighting dragons even though I'm not strong enough to stand against one without good backup. Those fights give you a clear adversary and I can always tell why I died when I'm fighting one.

Harrowstorms feel too punishing. They're chaotic and hard to follow, it's hard to see the red of enemy AOE (which I've left on default because I'm used to it), and they will chew you up and spit you out if you don't know the mechanics. I do know the mechanics now, but it's just not fun the way that dragons are fun, so I won't go near a Harrowstorm unless I have the daily quest.

kargen27

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Zer0_CooL wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The rewards shouldn't be that good, it's overland content. The Harrowstorms should just he toned down. Put them at the same difficulty as geysers and suddenly their rewards would be nice.

No they don't need to be toned down.

They are already easy enough, given the fact that they are not meant to be done solo. Yet they can be done by 2 or 3 (in my experience) players easily.

Absolutely no reason to make them as trivial as everything else in overland PvE.

And when 2-3 people aren't available, because the content is dead, people just can't farm them. Overland Content should be scaled to the number of people actually doing it. And not tuned to people who claim they want difficultly but then don't actually play so that they can write in their diary about how they thought about doing one, didn't, but still gave themselves a little smile for the thought.

How would you scale them? If you are alone and attack what happens if three more players show up? If the Harrowstorm can't adjust to new players arriving we all know what would happen. One player attacks while others sit on the horizon waiting so they can rush in and get the easy loot. With players running around all willy nilly it would be really difficult to scale content to number of players.

If you are in a decent social guild you can usually find a few people willing to pop a couple of storms with you. They are meant as overland activities for groups.

Avoranti

I think the hardest part about the harrowstorms are those crow enemies that have the one shot attack. It’s the only thing I ever die from. Either another player is kiting the ground AoE into the group it does the attack that hits random players and kills in one hit. It’s normal attacks are fine though.

SeaGtGruff

BlueRaven wrote: »

The more content zos creates, the more spread out the player base becomes.

This is true, but I'm surprised to see that there are still players in the base game zones, and not all of them are noobs; many are high-level players. I think one possible reason that the older DLC and chapter zones seem to have lower player population than the base game zones might be because fewer players have purchased those DLCs or chapters, and don't have access to them through ESO Plus. For instance, Vvardenfell always seems to be well-populated, but then it's been included with the base game for a while now. So it might be the case that once the older players complete the content in a given DLC or chapter they move on, and there aren't very many newer players moving in.

Ryuvain

Caligamy_ESO wrote: »

Am I the only one who actually enjoys the difficulty of Harrowstorms & Dragons?

I feel like just about 99% of the rest of overland content is ridiculously easy to where I can push 1 2 5 for my area dots and keep running as the trash dies behind me.. it's quite boring.

I'm fine with overland difficulty, but I also like how strong dragons and harrowstorms are. I challenge them for fun and to see how good my build/tank is.

Avoranti wrote: »

I think the hardest part about the harrowstorms are those crow enemies that have the one shot attack. It’s the only thing I ever die from. Either another player is kiting the ground AoE into the group it does the attack that hits random players and kills in one hit. It’s normal attacks are fine though.

Yeah, shrines are the main killer in these. Their aoe attacks are all nearly one shots. Besides them, i find the storm difficulty fine. I just think shrines spam way too much stuff to dodge. Bloodknights also have a one shot but it's easier to see and react to.

Tldr: I like the difficulty of dragons and storms, so don't change them. Just that storm rewards could be better.

ghost_bg_ESO

from comments i see about western skyrim it hasn't changed much - 3 - 4 people know what they're doing and a bunch of people run around like headless chickens, if actually all people being there knew what to do, rewards would seem at least more reasonable ...

Minyassa

They used to be a good source for furnishing plans, but I believe that was nerfed and now they are pretty much just a time sink for dailies.